It’s usually possible to tell when it’s about to happen. The signal could be a set of dull eyes staring out from the middle of a group of teenage boys. Or a brief smirk. Could be from a man in a suit, could be from someone looking like a grandad. Sometimes there’s no warning, just the prickling sixth sense of “I’m about to be told how my tits are looking today by a complete stranger”.

“Catcalling” is exasperating and humiliating, but something to be lived with if you’re female and you go outside a lot. Racism, ableism, homophobia and transphobia often get mixed into the cocktail of abusive comments, too, and as Noa Jansma’s @dearcatcallers project showed, they come from all ages and all classes. We recipients live with it, because of course we do. There is far worse than words for us to live through out there – #MeToo can show you a sample (only from women of certain economic backgrounds lucky enough to have an internet connection of course). Yet, strangely, a peaceful acceptance of street harassment as “only words” is something I’m yet to feel.

Violence could follow any insult or sexual comment, yelled or whispered, from a stranger on the street

Instead, each unprompted “slut” or “ugly dyke” from people I’ve never met causes embarrassment, irritation, but mostly anger within me. And it’s an anger that doesn’t bleed out; it builds. Latest example (which I’ll forget as new ones replace it): last week in Houston, a man was offering his opinion on each woman who walked by him. One in front of me was told she had a “nice ass”, I was called a “bitch”. I turned around and advanced on him, startled he grabbed at my forearms and babbled excuses. I yelled for him to get his damn hands off of me, until he let go and swiftly left the area, visually resentful.

Despite enjoying humiliating people who try to do the same to me first (I’m a “bitch”, remember), it’s no real outlet for the humiliation of street harassment – it’s a stupid and reckless thing to do. I know that, because everyone who has been catcalled knows that. The words of street harassment fall on a spectrum of disrespect. Violence could follow any insult or sexual comment, yelled or whispered, from a stranger on the street. The words are merely an opening parry, or a hint of how little your rights, or very existence, are respected. Women are still being hurt by people who hate them, everywhere.

The words are nothing compared with what they could be, but are also a reminder of that. They’re intended that way: a smug reminder, a smirking warning – don’t get too comfortable in your life. Don’t think you’re entirely safe out here; you aren’t. The actual message, and motive, behind street harassment is quiet and assured, and that’s why it’s so grating and tiring. Because we already know.

#MeToo is still so dissonant. Is sexual assault, violence, rape culture and ingrained misogyny actually being recognised, openly and honestly, as wrong at last? Are missing stairs not being stepped around any more?

More familiar and less confusing is Bryan Cranston commenting that there’s “room down the road” for forgiveness of outed abusers like Harvey Weinstein; that’s to be expected. Also predictable – Jennifer Garner’s assertion that it’s women who need to be “more of a force” to stop assault. Saturday Night Live and Lena Dunham’s “but my friend wouldn’t do that”-style silencing statements aren’t surprising, either. Women are more used to excuses like this than to being listened to. They’re symptoms of a sexist status quo being protected – whether Bryan, Jennifer, Lena, and their cohorts realise that or not.

Catcallers and street harassers, however, know they’re maintaining a system of sexism – it’s the motive, and that’s why it angers me so much. In 2015 a survey by Cornell University and the anti-harassment campaign Hollaback! on street harassment found that an international average of 84% of women have been victims of street harassment between the ages of 11 and 17. The 2014 Stop Street Harassment survey also featured some scary (but unsurprising, if you’ve experienced it) statistics of women being “reminded”.

In light of #MeToo, will the upcoming US-based survey report lower numbers of street harassment? Probably not – not yet. I suspect harassers will be offering more messages of the misogyny that still exists in the world for a while. But that’s a signal too – that change is coming, and they know it.

…which will likely never happen in the United States, a country which claims to protect women’s rights and leader of the ‘free world.’ According to the Teen Vogue periodical, Great Britain has passed a law outlawing harassment based on gender-reliant discrimination:

Women who have been harassed may feel less trust in their community, with potential long-term impacts on mental health and well-being.

Lauren Ferreira Cardoso

March 20, 2017

“I actually don’t remember when I was first harassed on the street, but I do remember when I first experienced it as an abusive act: I was an adolescent traveling with my mom in a crowded underground wagon, where men could easily touch women without anyone noticing and with little possibility to prevent it.

This was the experience of Lucía Vázquez, a researcher in Mexico City, Mexico. Unfortunately, her story is not unique.

According to a multi-country poll by YouGov, Mexico City ranks first among 16 international cities surveyed for physical and verbal harassment on public transportation. Street harassment, a form of gender-based violence against women, can include any act or comment perpetrated in a public space that is unwanted and threatening, and is motivated by a person’s perceived sex or gender.

Violence against women in public spaces is not exclusive to Mexico City, of course. Experiences of street harassment—from being whistled at to being touched without consent—are reported each day on crowd-sourced websites like Hollaback and Safecity in dozens of other locations from New York and New Delhi, to Lawrence, Kansas and Lubbock, Texas.

There is still much to be learned about how harassment and feeling unsafe in public spaces affects the well-being of women and girls—a topic I focus on in my doctoral research at the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Social Policy and Practice—but the global scale of these experiences is concerning. Studies documenting the prevalence of street harassment in more than 35 countries show it could have widespread health effects across the globe.

Street harassment in Mexico City

One of the latest studies on this issue aimed to understand the extent of street harassment and its impacts on women, girls and communities in Mexico City. All of the women in this study had previously screened positive for intimate partner violence, a prerequisite for inclusion in the parent study.

Paola Abril Campos, a doctoral student at the Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health, is a native of Mexico City. She said in an interview for this article:

“Growing up, I learned to fake a phone call to my parents to feel safer and avoid harassment. I learned to wear not the clothes I wanted, but the clothes that made me feel ‘safe.’ I learned to take quick detours during my daily commute. And I learned to put up with the impotence I felt when harassed.”

Her experiences motivated her to conduct a study on street harassment that was published in January in Salud Pública de México, a journal published by Mexico’s National Institute of Public Health.

In this study, Campos and colleagues surveyed 952 women who were seeking health care in Mexico City’s community health clinics. More than 60 percent of the women, 62.8 percent, reported experiencing at least one form of street harassment in the past month alone. For one in four women, 26.8 percent, the abuse was physical.

The study found that the harassment, or fear of harassment, had negative impacts on the daily routines of these women. Nearly 70 percent reported some type of disruptions in their mobility, including missing, being late to or having to change jobs or schools. And yet, Campos said, “The costs and consequences of street harassment to women’s lives have remained invisible.”

The study also found that street harassment may diminish women’s sense of connectedness and trust in their community. Social isolation from one’s community can have long-term implications for well-being and can lead to chronic disease and poor mental health. Therefore, street harassment may contribute to these other public health concerns.

For the women in this study who were also victims of intimate partner violence, violence is a threat in both public and private. Jhumka Gupta, a global and community health professor at George Mason University and senior author of the study, stated: “Comprehensive interventions are needed to ensure women and girls’ safety both in public settings and in private spaces.”

Emerging solutions

There is some political will to address the issue in Mexico City. In conjunction with local authorities, UN Women has launched the program “Safe Cities and Safe Public Spaces for Women and Girls,” which is promoting women’s safety through, among other mechanisms, providing women-only buses throughout the city.

The city’s mayor, Miguel Ángel Mancera Espinosa, is also supporting an initiative that distributes whistles to women that they can use when someone harasses them. The idea is to “break the silence” and bring attention to harassers.

Street harassment is a common problem in the United States too. A recent nationally representative survey found that 65 percent of U.S. women have faced street harassment at some point in their lifetimes. These numbers may be rising.

The Southern Poverty Law Center reports that there has been a post-election uptick of harassment and intimidation of many marginalized groups, including women. However, in February a new bill aimed at preventing street harassment in Washington, D.C. was introduced to its city council. It seeks to “eradicate street harassment in the District of Columbia through education, awareness, data collection and culture change.” The bill is broad and inclusive in its definition of street harassment and comprehensive in its approach. Will other cities follow its lead?